It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America’s many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere. The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,” according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.
It’s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away, says Josh Begley, the program’s New York-based developer. The company’s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Store keep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application that aggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia “not useful.” Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo. And now, there’s this crude content problem.
Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn’t present grisly images of corpses left in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when a strike has occurred, going off a publicly available database of strikes compiled by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles media accounts of the strikes.
iOS developers have a strict set of guidelines that must be adhered to in order to gain acceptance into the App Store. Apps are judged on technical, content and design criteria. As Apple does not comment on the app reviews process, it can be difficult to ascertain exactly why an app got rejected. But Apple’s team of reviewers is small, sifts through up to 10,000 apps a week, and necessarily errs on the side of caution when it comes to potentially questionable apps.
Apple’s original objections to Drones+ regarded the functionality Begley’s app, not its content. Now he’s wondering if it’s worth redesigning and submitting it a fourth time.
“If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley says.
Continue Reading “Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes” »
###
This is the Universe… but is it art? – Starts With A Bang.
Proteins feel long-range attractive forces.
BBC News – The skies open up for large civilian drones.
A single gene has a major impact on gaits in horses and in mice | e! Science News.
FBI catches another Lulzsec man – Untouchables claim he brought down Sony | TechEye.
Encourage everyday exercise, not sporting elites
###
The man who holds the Guinness record for the world’s lowest voice can hit notes so low that only animals as big as elephants are able to hear them.
American singer Tim Storms who also has the world’s widest vocal range can reach notes as low as G-7 (0.189Hz), an incredible eight octaves below the lowest G on the piano.
###
Internet Movie Database “The Internet Movie Database is a huge collection of movie information. We try to catalog every pertinent detail about a movie, from who was in it, to who made it, to trivia about it, to filming locations, and even where you can find reviews and fan sites on the web. We then do our best to present this information in a manner that is easy to search and access.”
Edmond Hoyle was from London and he collected instructions for playing games; he may have been the first technical writer on card games. His “Short Treatise on the Game of Whist” was published in 1742 and it became the model guide to the rules of the game. Hoyle’s name became synonymous with the idea of “correct” play according to the rules and the phrase “according to Hoyle” was first recorded in 1906. – Provided by Reference.com
###
###
Which Firefox is right for you — 15, 16, 17 or 18?.
Bacterial cause found for skin condition rosacea | e! Science News.
Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth’s first life | e! Science News.
Scientists Creating “Super Spaghetti” – Science News – redOrbit.
Smokers more than double their risk of burst aneurysm | Science Codex.
###
Researchers Hack Brainwaves to Reveal PIN Numbers, Other Personal Data | Threat Level | Wired.com
The “developer edition” of the Emotiv Epoc headset — if you think you can handle it. Photo: drbakker/Flickr
Don’t you dare even think about your banking account password when you slap on those fancy new brainwave headsets.
Or at least that seems to be the lesson of a new study which found that sensitive personal information, such as PIN numbers and credit card data, can be gleaned from the brainwave data of users wearing popular consumer-grade EEG headsets.
A team of security researchers from Oxford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Geneva say that they were able to deduce digits of PIN numbers, birth months, areas of residence and other personal information by presenting 30 headset-wearing subjects with images of ATM machines, debit cards, maps, people, and random numbers in a series of experiments. The paper, titled “On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain Computer Interfaces,” represents the first major attempt to uncover potential security risks in the use of the headsets.
MORE.
###
###
FAMILIES OF FALLEN SEALS ALLEGEDLY SENT FORM LETTERS WITH PRESIDENT’S ELECTRONIC SIGNATURE
Thirty U.S. service members were killed on August 6, 2011, when a CH-47 Chinook was shot down in Afghanistan’s Wardak province. As Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft reminds us, it is the deadliest single loss of U.S. forces in the Afghanistan campaign.
Among those killed in the crash were 17 members of the U.S. Navy SEALs. And although the deadly attack was over a year ago, it wasn’t until yesterday that, apparently, parents of fallen SEALs revealed that were sent stock letters with President Obama’s electronic signature.
“Yesterday, Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, spoke at the Defending the Defenders forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots outside the RNC Convention in Tampa. Karen brought a copy of the form letter they were sent following their son’s death,” Hoft reports.
A form letter?
Courtesy Gateway PunditBut wait. There’s more.
###
Susan Sarandon, 65, spotted canoodling with much younger dude
MSN
Susan Sarandon is no longer afraid to show off her much, much younger beau. The Academy Award-winner was snapped engaging in some PDA with Jonathan Bricklin, who, at 33, is 32 years younger than the 65-year-old Sarandon. The two were spotted at the U.S. Open in New York, and though they have reportedly been together for about two years, they’ve kept their relationship out of the spotlight. While catching a match, Bricklin was seen holding Sarandon’s hand as well as massaging her shoulders. Good for her — though it might make family meetings a little awkward, considering Sarandon’s oldest daughter, Eva Amurri, is 27. [Source]
###
Sugar Molecule Spotted Near Sun-Like Star
For the first time, astronomers have discovered sugar—one of the building blocks of life—in a gas cloud near a star. The simple molecule, called glycolaldehyde, is essential to the formation of ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is present in all living cells. The 10,000-year-old star, known as IRAS 16293-2422, is similar to the Sun and is approximately 400 light-years from Earth. Scientists believe the glycolaldehyde may have been formed as a result of the star’s radiation hitting even simpler molecules.
More
###
Nature News Blog: Epigenetic drug may lower cholesterol build-up : Nature News Blog.
New and Hot Video: Bob Dylan Debuts Shockingly Violent New Video | Rolling Stone.
John Banville: The Lost Leader | The New Republic.
War News Updates: Rape In The Armed Forces.
Deep-Sea, Shrimp-like Creatures Survive By Eating Wood.
Chimpanzees create social traditions.
###
Thurgood Marshall Confirmed as First African-American US Supreme Court Justice (This day in 1967)
The great-grandson of a slave and the first African American to serve on the US Supreme Court, Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Civil Rights movement. As a lawyer, he won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education and others that established equal protection for African Americans in housing, voting, employment, and education. What church has included Marshall in its calendar of saints?
###
Beyond Human | Watch Free Documentary Online
Beyond HumanHumans becoming more like machines. Machines becoming more like humans. Over the centuries, scientists speculated that we could tap into the body’s electrical system to restore lost functions or enhance our powers, like machines.Science fiction has returned again and again to the merger of man and machine, the Cyborg, with fascination and fear.As we steadily merge with our technology, the focus is on devices that enhance our senses and minds and knit us together in new ways. Members of a lab at the University of Toronto have been pioneering the computerized life style.Imagine a day when machines walk among us, expressing thoughts, emotions, demanding their rights. Today, we are breathing intelligence, even life, into creatures of silicon and steel.To build a humanoid that can function in our world is a bold challenge being taken up by isolated labs around the world. Researchers are infusing robots with abilities ranging from grasping to hearing and vision.If tomorrow’s robots are going to share our world, they will have to have something extra: an emotional and psychological dimension to help them communicate and respond in ways people can understand.
###
M. L. Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans” Review : The New Yorker.
Francis Bacon inspired by Nazi propaganda – Telegraph.
amanda palmer – artforum.com / 500 words.
Self-published authors react with anger to ‘laziness’ charge | Books | guardian.co.uk.
On Reconciling Atheism and Meaning in the Universe – Steve Paulson – The Atlantic.
###
Muriel Ellen Deason, AKA Kitty Wells (Born this day in 1919)
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Wells sang gospel music in church as a child and performed on radio in the 1930s. She achieved fame with her 1952 hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” a rebuttal to a popular song about wayward women. It made her the first female musician to top the country music charts, paving the way for later female country stars such as Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline. She sang about topics such as drinking and divorce. How did radio stations react to her first hit?
###
The incredible moments in nature that will both delight and shock
These incredible photographs show nature’s beauty and brutality in equal measure.Some will delight, others will shock, but all capture the stunning variety that exists in the animal kingdom and the interactions that go on there.In one, an eagle lunges at a hungry fox, while another shows a terrified baboon struggling to free itself from its shackles among a group of children.
MORE.
###
What the Street View van saw… The random and anonymous slices of life captured as Google documents the world from the road-side
However much you travel the world, you will be hard-pressed to see as much of it as the combined forces of Google’s Street View fleet.The search firm’s employees have so far trawled more than five million miles across the planet, with a tripod-mounted camera capturing a 360 of its environment as the driver keeps his eyes on the road.Artist Jon Rafman has scoured the Street View website looking for fleeting, split-second moments which show us just slices of human life countless moments probably missed everyday by drivers, but preserved forever on film.From the tiger prowling in the parking lot, to open gun purchases on the street, these images show just the variety of people living out their daily lives unobserved, at least until the Street View van goes by.One of the fun elements of these series is that, other than Jon and Google, no-one knows where the images were taken.
###
How Darwin Can Save Your Marriage | Think Tank | Big Think.
Shakespeare flashmob in Covent Garden – video | Culture | guardian.co.uk.
Insights Into Language And Emotion From Psychological Science.
Annie Lennox’s “Little Bird”: At Your Request | Music News, Reviews, and Gossip on Idolator.com.
What Is Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD)?.
###
